How I’m Learning… Futures Thinking
People often talk about ear-worms, or when a song gets stuck in your head and goes around and around and around. Well, last year I had a brain-worm.
In January 2022 I read Imaginable by Jane McGonigal. I’d heard about Jane’s game design work in around 2016 after hearing her interview on Tim Ferriss’ podcast, but didn’t know as much about her futures work. But once I read the book, I was hooked. I bought multiple copies as gifts and recommended it tirelessly. (I assume my commission cheque is in the post?).
For the rest of 2022 I was thinking about the ideas in Imaginable; the provocations about possible futures, the big existential questions, and the myriad of examples. How had I not heard of this before?! This futures thing appeared to be a combination of my favourite disciplines and habits - design, facilitation, constant learning, curation, curiosity, and asking (really) hard questions.
In late 2022 I decided I needed to go further and bring futures more into my life and work. Which meant creating my own learning adventure…
Being a good little learning person, I know that knowledge ≠ competence and this was definitely going to need a multi-faceted approach. So, here’s how I’m learning Futures Thinking (so far).
Books
Imaginable by Jane McGonigal
Scenario Planning Guide by Simon Waller
Convergence by Dr Catherine Ball
Courses (asynchronous)
Futures Thinking Specialisation by The Institute of the Future (IFTF) on Coursera. This program is run by IFTF, where Jane McGonigal is a director. I worked my way through the five modules over the December/January break. I started off thinking I’d just audit the course to take in the content, but half way through decided I might as well complete the full course and take the assessments to get the certificate.
Networks
Luckily, I had a couple of futurists in my circles; Reanna Browne and Simon Waller. They’ve both been very generous in spending time with me downloading some of their clever brains and answering my (many) questions.
I’ve also sent connection requests to futurists I’ve heard on podcasts, which I find is a nice way to start building your own new networks in a non-spammy non-please-be-my-friend way (whether that’s in a new discipline or not).
Note: I’m keeping my eye out for some kind of ‘community of practice’ to benefit more from networks.
Practice / collaborations / teaching
It’s not a completely wild statement that you often learn the most through practicing/doing, and/or through teaching. Here’s how I’m doing that…
1) Teaching futures skills as part of client workshops
2) Collaborating with Reanna Browne to design a workshop for one of my clients, where we’ll explore the future of work (post to follow after the session happens in late March)
3) Making sure I’m ‘learning out loud’ by sharing these examples, which leads to possibilities like this popping up…
Writing
Every Friday I’ve set myself the challenge of posting on LinkedIn about futures under the hashtag #28thursdaysfuturefridays. Every month I’m publishing the Now/Next newsletter, where I share a longer-form piece of futures pondering.
Both of these force me to think a bit more about signals I’m seeing (and make sure I am looking for/at signals), and practice the skill of imagining exploratory futures, rather than just extrapolations of the present. I’m quite enjoying creating little artefacts for some of these posts.
Social media
I started following a bunch of futurists on LinkedIn (literally just started by searching ‘futurists’ and seeing what interesting folks popped up). I like to do this to start to pepper my newsfeed with the topics I want to learn more about.
Newsletters and blogs
The IFTF newsletter is a good source of signals, insights, and ideas. Stuart Candy’s blog (the sceptical futuryst) has been a source of much admiration, aspiration, and brain pokes.
Day One Agency publish an annual predictionary. Whilst this is more prediction than futures thinking, it’s a pretty cool example of a resource and compelling comms of these types of topics. It’s also useful to see what sorts of signals they’re picking up on, even if they are more short term.
I’ve also subscribed to Wired magazine and made it a regular practice to listen to all the TechCrunch daily podcasts. They both have a more tech / startup lens, but are also good places for signal spotting based on what’s getting funded, what’s going under, and what these things might mean.
Courses (live)
I wanted to get a bit deeper and learn in a live format to play with these ideas with others. I signed up for the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies Applied Strategic Foresight course. For the Australian timezone, this happened over four evenings. The participants in my cohort were based in the UK, Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands, Singapore, Thailand, and Australia. Whilst this program was specifically about using futures thinking for strategy, I really liked going deeper into how to build compelling, useful scenarios. It’s also a novel treat to learn alongside people from other countries.
I’m looking for some other live course options, preferably an in-person program that gets into more of the existential part of futures and will really help me totally rethink the fundamentals of everything.
Events
I was already looking for events in 2023 that were going to share truly new ideas and shake up formats. House of Beautiful Business and SXSW Sydney aren’t futures specific events, but they have that direction and both have several futurists on the speaker list. Well designed events are also great places to find future collaborators, people to follow, and clever conversations.
On the list (but dates and logistics haven’t worked out for their 2023 events yet) is going to more of StartUp Vic’s pitch nights. Again, a useful place to see what businesses are emerging and what this could be possible signals of.
Immersion
A bit of a lateral one but in June I’m spending a couple of weeks working from / ‘living’ in Lisbon. Portugal (and Lisbon in particular) has something pretty cool going on with their approach to digital nomads and the startup scene. I’m living with some locals, will work from some coworking spaces, go to yoga/pilates, and will be using the Breakfast app to meet some interesting local folk. I want to find out more about what’s going on there…
Podcasts
One of my favourite ways to learn on a daily basis is podcasts. I’ve been working my way through the very impressive back catalogue of Future Pod, which has led me down multiple…
Rabbit holes
There are a million new threads to pull on when you open a new Pandora’s box. I’ve got a gazillion tabs open from the examples shared in the courses, podcasts, LinkedIn posts. I’ve been using Readwise to help me collate some of these.
Phew. That’s it. Writing it out it looks/feels like a lot. But it’s really just a start. Learning is so much about intent and enthusiasm, which is really hard to manufacture from anywhere but within yourself.
The more I learn about this field, the more excited I am to find my own little slice of it. Theres’s so many cool examples of where futures is being used in really creative and impactful ways, I’m looking forward to having my own case studies in time.
I definitely fall into the trap when learning something new of immediately feeling ‘behind’ (and if I’m honest, annoyed at myself for not knowing about ‘the thing’ sooner). I try to channel this into enthusiasm and immersion, rather than overwhelm and self-loathing. So far so good…